Pygmalion and Educating Rita: Language and IdentityThis essay is based on the reading of two literary plays, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw and Educating Rita by Willy Russell. Language and identity are two expressions that need to be explained. English is the official language in several countries; Chinese is the language spoken by the Chinese and Danish is the language spoken by the Danes. But languages ​​could also be described as different ways of speaking depending on social origin, education, profession, age and gender. A person's language is linked to their social situation. Eliza, the cockney bridesmaid from the gutter, does not speak the same language as Professor Higgins, even though English is their shared first language. They speak differently because they belong to different social worlds. Identity can mean a person's very particular characteristic, something that makes them different from others.EDUCATION AND CHANGES IN IDENTITYEliza and Rita, the main characters of the two plays, are both objects of identity change over the course of stories. Are these changes the same or can we find differences? Both young women come from intellectually disadvantaged backgrounds. Eliza is a young flower girl who speaks a gutter language. She speaks in the following way: "That's no reason to meddle with me, that's not the case." (1) Her manners are crude and her cockney accent makes her seem like a second-class citizen. She is treated this way. However, she seems proud of herself: "I'm a good girl, I am." (2) Rita is a brash, earthy twenty-six-year-old hairdresser, married to a beer-drinking Liverpudlian who demands she have children and be a good wife. She doesn't feel satisfied with her marriage. At the hair salon where she works, she is tired of listening every day to women who talk a lot without saying anything important. “They never tell you things that matter.” (3) The story of the two plays tells how women's education changes their lives. There is remarkable progress in their studies and the result is an obvious change in their lives. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CHANGES I suspect that many readers and viewers of both plays consider them to be much the same story. In fact, this is not the case. There is at least one important difference. The changes are not the same. One of them is external while the other is internal.